Richard Dreyfuss, Oscar-winning star of jaw And American graffiti, said recently revealed Academy entry requirements that mandate diverse on-screen representation and behind-the-scenes recruiting “made me puke.”
Asked about the rules, which were first announced in 2020 and set for the upcoming 2024 Oscars, in a wide-ranging interview with Margaret Hoover on the sixth episode of PBS firing line, Dreyfuss was speechless. “This is an art form,” he said. “It is also a form of business, making money, but it is an art. And no one should tell me as an artist that I have to give in to the latest, most modern ideas about what is moral.
Two of the four inclusion criteria, which range from having at least one main character or “significant supporting” character in the film belong to “a racial or ethnic minority group” to the film’s plot focus membership in one of those groups, or having a creative leadership team partly made up of underrepresented groups, must be met in order for a project to be considered the best film by the Academy. The 75-year-old actor won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1978 for the film goodbye girl, adding, “And what are we risking? Do we really risk hurting people’s feelings? You can’t legitimize that. And you have to let life be life.”
Dreyfuss later defended Laurence Olivier’s performance in the 1965 film Hello, Olivier with a black face as Shakespeare’s tragic hero. “He played a Negro brilliantly,” Dreyfuss told Hoover. “Am I told that I will never get the chance to play a black man? Has anyone else been told that if they weren’t Jewish, they shouldn’t be playing the Merchant of Venice? Are we crazy? Don’t we know that art is art? This is very patronizing. It’s really, really thoughtless and treating everyone like children.”
When Hoover asked Dreyfuss if “is there a difference between the question of representation and who is allowed to represent other groups,” especially with regard to blacks “due to a history of slavery and sensitivities to feelings around the racism of Negroes,” Dreyfuss replied, “Shouldn’t be…. Because it patronizes. Because it says that we are too fragile to let our feelings get hurt. We have to anticipate our own feelings being hurt, our children’s feelings being hurt. We don’t know how to stand up and punch the bully in the face.”
